It is a place where people can donate to their favorite charity or school without ever spending a single penny.

It is called GoodSearch.com, a search engine powered by Yahoo! that donates about a penny to the nonprofit organization of the user's choice every time he or she searches the Internet.

The search engine, which was developed in 2005, is completely free for users. The donations come from 50 percent of GoodSearch's advertising revenue.

"It's just a great way to raise money," said Jenny Kress, Kennedy Elementary School technology teacher. "This is where you need to go to do your searches."

Many Dubuque schools are listed on the search engine's site. Kress registered Kennedy with the site in 2007, and the school has since raised a little more than $44.

"Kids love it," Kress said. "They feel like they've done something for the school just by doing what they usually do."

It was a student at Loras College who suggested the Loras College Dance Marathon use the search engine.

Kim Walsh, director of student life at Loras, said she was suspicious at first. But after some research, she signed the marathon up for the search engine nearly three years ago.

"I have it on my toolbar," said Walsh, adviser of the Dance Marathon committee. "Unless the search engine is down "| I always use GoodSearch."

The Dance Marathon chapter has raised more than $900 for the University of Iowa Children's Hospital and the Children's Miracle Network just by using GoodSearch.

"As long as you're doing Internet searches "| you might as well be helping somebody out," Walsh said.

People also can raise money by shopping online. GoodSearch recently launched a new site, GoodShop.com, which will donate up to 37 percent of each purchase made from one of the registered stores.

"It seems very unusual in this day and age," said Amy Lorenz, community outreach coordinator for the Dubuque Regional Humane Society.

Lorenz registered the humane society with the search engine a few months ago after a volunteer told her about it.

People within the Western Dubuque Community School District have used the search engine since 2007.

"We thought this would be a great way to bring some revenue to the district," said Coby Culbertson, WD technology director.

Although he defaulted all of the computers in the nine-school district to GoodSearch, Culbertson still had doubts about how much money the district could raise.

"I didn't think a lot of people would take advantage of it," he said.

But they did.

The district has since raised more than $1,700.

"It's worked very well for us," Culbertson said. "You can't ask for anything much easier than that."